ESD events can be triggered by human interaction with an integrated circuit (IC), causing high voltages on one or more pads of the IC. If the IC is unprotected, these high voltages can lead to undesired current flow through internal circuitry, which can damage or degrade circuit components of the IC. Accordingly, many ICs include protection circuits to provide discharge paths between one or more pads and a ground terminal. ESD protection circuits may be provided to protect power supply terminals, as well as to protect I/O terminals and other external connections that may be subjected to ESD events. In use, however, certain ICs need to be inserted into a socket of a printed circuit board while the board is powered, or the IC is mounted to a circuit board that itself is plugged into or interconnected with a powered host circuit. These situations are sometimes referred to as hot-plug or hot-socket insertion situations. During hot-plug conditions, ESD protection circuit may be inadvertently triggered, resulting in high current flow between a protected pad and a ground connection, which can damage or degrade the ESD protection circuit or other components of the IC. The ESD protection circuit may be actuated by triggering circuits with small time constants, but false triggering of the ESD circuit may still occur in certain hot-plug transient events involving high pad voltages or where an ESD protection transistor is sensitive to transient slew rates due to large gate-drain or gate-source capacitances associated with the ESD protection transistor. In such cases, the triggering circuit can lose control of the protection switch. Further circuitry can be added to limit leakage current during hot-plug or other transient events, but this approach adds to the cost and size of the IC and/or a host printed circuit board. Also, such current limiting techniques often require high voltage components to accommodate hot-plug conditions or other transient events in which relatively high voltages are seen at a protected IC pad.